


the realm of quietly growing things

by younglegends



Category: Triple H (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Canon-Typical Violence, Halloween, Magic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-14 09:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15385947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: Somebody’s been stealing the flowers from Hyojong’s garden.





	the realm of quietly growing things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tintinwrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tintinwrite/gifts).



> happy birthday tin and i hope this comes close to what you might've wanted when you single-handedly spoke this into existence. love you!
> 
> this story is loosely inspired by the retro future MV, which at first disappointed me because it didn't expand on the 365 fresh storyline/universe, but then made me realize, fuck it, i'll roll with all this lush ass imagery, it's leo season and i love this trio of chaotic neutral thrill-chasing fucks.
> 
> warnings: physical violence & underage drinking/smoking/fooling around

Somebody’s been stealing the flowers from Hyojong’s garden.

They’re considerate about it, at least. Almost careful. Don’t leave a mess. At first it was just carnations and peonies, the occasional calla lily, but they’ve been growing bold. His dahlia bush is missing a few blooms. Hyojong contemplates the damage with an almost curious interest. His greenhouse isn’t particularly hard to enter—he never bothers leaving it locked—but the protection charms are a different story. He eyes the vials hanging from the roof and wonders why they had let the thief in. They reveal nothing—only catch shards of light coming through the glass, as though winking at him.

“Hmm,” Hyojong says.

The flowers murmur in the birth of a sudden breeze. Hyojong sets down his watering can, dusts the earth from his palms.

Outside, the late October chill is sharp enough to cut through his thin shirt, though the afternoon sun still alights on his shoulders, crowning the back of his head. A pair of children run by on the street, dressed as witches. Hyojong lets the corner of his mouth curl up into a secret smile. Reaches up to run the pendant hanging around his neck through his fingers, warm against his skin. For luck.

He sets off down the road, and starts humming a song.

 

*

 

School rings for the end of the day like the toll of a funeral bell and Hyuna walks out without looking back. In the hall some of the girls she’d agreed to dress up with as matching Sailor Senshi demand why she’d ditched her costume at home. She doesn’t tell them she had stayed up all night ripping the seams out of the cheap schoolgirl uniform with her nails. At first just a loose thread in the short skirt, but then the idle curiosity catching like a flame, wanting to see just how far it would unravel. By morning the cloth left in tatters on her bed. She put on a dress instead, a dark drop of velvet and neckline swooping low, and stepped on every crack in the sidewalk on her way to school.

School—the final year dragging like a chain, unbearably long, and longer still. Popularity a second skin on her, shiny like a bubble, one getting ready to pop. Are you gonna be at the Halloween party, someone shouts after her; hey, where’s your costume, sexy, where are you going? Hyuna sweeps past them all. Wonders, distant like an itch on the back of her neck, when all of it had meant she had become an open door, one anyone could enter.

The sound of the bell on the door of the convenience store announces her arrival. She’d come here for something sweet, but ends up bypassing the candy, the drinks, and closes her fist around a box of cigarettes. Hunger a yearning cave inside her, its mouth strained open in a howl, or a yawn.

The owner behind the counter barely glances at her fake ID, too preoccupied with the low cut of her dress. In a better mood Hyuna’d play along, but she keeps her face drawn, eyes bored, that lethally empty gaze of a teenage girl on her way to better places and things, sliding past him entirely to the security mirror behind his shoulder, where she spots Lee Hwitaek slipping a lighter up his sleeve.

They make startled eye contact like driver and deer.

“Hey, what’s going on over there,” the store owner is saying, and the reaction is automatic as the jerk of a knee when struck. Hyuna learns forward across the counter, blocking his view, and smiles wide. Opening up like a flower.

Somewhere behind her, the ring of a bell. A door closing.

But when she emerges he’s standing on the sidewalk outside, sneakers scuffing the pavement. He had waited for her. She hadn’t expected that.

“Thought you’d be long gone,” Hyuna says to him in greeting.

“You didn’t have to do that.” His voice low.

“Right.” Pop of her lips, cherry-red. “Saved you from running. Didn’t I?”

He narrows his gaze at her. “What do you want.”

Hyuna considers it. Takes out a cigarette from the box.

“I want a light,” she says. “Got one to spare?”

He stares at her, hard. Then drops the lighter out of his sleeve and into the palm of his hand. Hyuna claps her hands together. Good trick. Holds the cigarette between her lips and leans in close.

Though only inches away, Hwitaek somehow still keeps his distance. It’s in the eyes, the neutral flick of his stare. The hiss of flame bursting into life, alighting at the end of her cigarette.

Hyuna takes a puff. Blows smoke back into his face.

“Thanks,” she says. And then, deliberately: “Hwitaek, right?”

It’s not a question. She knows everyone’s name. Not what people would expect from her, high school queen bee flitting far above their heads, but there’s a power in seeing a face and placing their name. In recognition. It always catches other people off guard, she can tell, but really she’s just making up for a disadvantage, making it even. Everyone knows _her_ name, after all.

There it is—a flash of something across his face. There and gone again. Sharp like a self-awareness, filling him out, making him real. Then back to blankness.

They stand there, shoulder to shoulder outside the convenience store, surrounded in her smoke. He’s itching to flee, she can tell. Shuffle from foot to foot. What interests her is why he doesn’t.

“You got something to ask?” Hyuna says. Her mouth tastes like fire. He watches it carefully, as though knowing it burns. Keeping a close eye on the danger.

“Your costume,” Hwitaek says eventually, as though he can’t resist the question. Gesturing at her, head to toe. “What are you supposed to be?”

Hyuna smiles. Bares her teeth.

“Myself,” she says.

 

*

 

Hyuna doesn’t so much follow him as she does insinuate herself into his space. Clinging onto his arm like she belongs there, like they’re partners in crime. They’re not. Hyuna comes from a different world, one of flashes of bare skin and shrill laughter in the school hallways, the bright centre of everything burning. Hwitaek sticks to the shadows. Keeps his head down, though not his eyes. He’s always watching. For something important, something valuable. Something to steal. Coins, wallets, phones—the usual—but then the occasional knickknack: a crumpled note passed in class, a fine-tipped pen, a keepsake. Curiosities more than anything; markers of this world. And the nervous tic of his fingers smoothing flat.

He’s never stolen anything from Hyuna. Never risked getting close enough to touch.

“You’re not wearing a costume, either,” Hyuna says.

They must make quite a sight. Hwitaek with his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched. Hyuna hanging off him like a flower on a dead branch. Turning every head on the sidewalk. Fuck off, he should tell her, get away from me. Before he catches and goes up in flames, too.

But there’s something distracting about her presence, the intensity of her attention. Light falling off her everywhere she goes. And for some reason, she’s chosen to be right here, right now.

“Halloween’s not really my thing,” Hwitaek says. Blinking the spots from his vision.

“Hmm,” Hyuna says, almost singsong. “Or maybe you’re already always in disguise.”

Hwitaek stiffens. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe you’re always the costume,” Hyuna says, “and you just never take it off. Show what’s really underneath.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, makes it sound suggestive, but her intent runs deeper. Hwitaek can feel it like a knife at his skin. The hint of a sharp edge.

“What are you talking about,” Hwitaek mutters, “I don’t even know you.” Head spinning something awful. All of this was a mistake. He shouldn’t have even taken anything from the convenience store—he didn’t _need_ it—but it had caught his eye, the row of coloured lighters lined up neatly on the shelf, the gleam of metal clean enough to see his own reflection in. The promise of a spark. And the days are getting colder, now, the hairpin turn of summer into fall, trees set ablaze on the street, all that gold turning to rust. Maybe he had wanted to keep it for himself—that last little piece of warmth.

And now, Kim fucking Hyuna at his arm, watching him like he’s got anything else up his sleeve, holding on and not letting go.

Then her gaze catches on something behind him.

“What,” Hwitaek says, “what is it,” and he turns around, sees a couple of guys cornering a third on the street. Spitting words like barbed wire. He’s seen them around at school, steers out of their way for the most part, although he’d scored a phone from them once—a sleek shiny thing that he took the vindictive pleasure of hurling into the river. The satisfaction of knowing it would sink, would never again be found.

The third guy—Hwitaek knows him, too, and feels a lurch of dread in his gut.

“C’mon, freak,” one of them is saying, crowding into his space, “say something,” but he doesn’t. Doesn’t even lift a hand in his own defense. Just stands there with a dead-eyed gaze, long light hair fallen over his face, for all intents and purposes a scarecrow left to languish in a field. Christ, it’s pathetic, Hwitaek’s thinking, he could at least _run,_ when Hyuna of all people storms forward with her hand balled up into a fist.

“Leave him alone,” Hyuna says, and they turn on her then.

“The fuck you gonna do about it,” one of them leers, and Hyuna smiles back with perfectly white teeth, slaps him straight in the face. Her long nails catching on the skin of his cheek, drawing blood.

Oh, shit, Hwitaek has enough presence of mind to think, and then he’s running after her, rationality thrown to the winds. Shoving Hyuna to the side, her hair a wild shock of black in his periphery, just in time to take the hit. Knuckles grinding into his nose, the clear burst of pain across his face.

“Ow, _shit,_ ” Hwitaek says, blind but for the stars in his eyes. Then he’s falling, the unforgiving sidewalk rising up to greet him. Whoever’s on top of him has him by the collar, raining punches down on him like thunder, every hit lighting him up through his bones. Some remnant of survival instinct sends his knee up, between his assailant’s legs. He feels him crumple, and pushes him off, blinking through the storm of perfect panic in his mind to see—Hyuna and Hyojong, united in their wrath, kicking and scratching and _biting_ , and a sudden wind that’s risen around them, sending the others sprawling on the ground.

“Fucking _freaks,_ ” one of them yells, and then they pick themselves up off the asphalt, make a break for it.

Hwitaek blinks, again. His nose is bleeding. The hurt of it is the only proof that the past few minutes really did happen, that Hyuna and Hyojong really are jumping up and down and whooping in giddy triumph before him, hands meeting in the clap of a high-five that resounds all the way down the street.

“We did it,” Hyuna says, and Hwitaek realizes with some surprise that it includes him, too. She holds out her hand to him, the faint sweep of bruising across her knuckles starting to form under the skin. He stares as it. The cuts on his face stinging in the wind.

“Come on up,” she says. Up and into the light.

Then, with a twist of her mouth: “How very honourable of you.”

“Not quite,” Hwitaek hears himself say, and lifts the wallet in his hand.

The delight on Hyuna’s face makes her look younger than he’s ever seen her, under the lipstick, the spidery lashes of her eyes. But Hyojong’s looking somewhere else. Hwitaek’s bag, fallen during the scuffle, leaking flowers out onto the street. Petals scattering in the wind, colouring the air.

How had Hwitaek ever thought his eyes looked dead—?

“It’s you,” Hyojong says. Sounding faintly astonished, his mouth painted red with laughter.

And something odd about the wind, lifting strands of his hair on end, as though charged by static shock.

 

*

 

“It wasn’t a _prank_ ,” Hwitaek says.

“Uh-huh,” Hyojong says. Swirling his straw in his glass.

“Wasn’t meant to cause harm, or anything. I didn’t think you’d even notice.”

“Of course I’d notice,” Hyojong says.

They’re crowded in a window booth at a diner. Hyojong and Hyuna sitting shoulder to shoulder, across from Hwitaek, who looks immensely uncomfortable in the task of trying to explain himself. Like he’s never had to do it before. Like he needs to, though Hyojong hadn’t asked.

“I just liked them,” Hwitaek mumbles. “They just—stood out, you know? In the middle of this neighbourhood, the suburbs. A spot of colour. I couldn’t help myself.”

His pack is open next to him, evidence left on display. A bouquet of long-stemmed flowers, red and yellow and pink. He’d just been carrying them around, Hyojong thinks, a faint urge to shake his head in reproach. Random pieces plucked from the garden on a whim.  No rhyme or reason to the arrangement; no sense of preservation. They’d never last.

“A piece of beauty,” Hwitaek says, quiet, almost to himself.

The tips of Hyojong’s fingers tingle. The flowers stir, as though brought back to life by the compliment, preening.

“You kept coming back,” Hyojong says. Blowing bubbles into his soda. At the window, a moth drawn by their lamplight hovers on the other side of the glass, as though caught in a trance.

Hwitaek flushes red. A scar on the bridge of his nose, from where the fists had scraped his skin. Hyojong can’t stop staring at it in bright fascination. A mark he’d made on someone else.

“The door was never locked,” Hwitaek says. “Practically left open.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Hyuna half-says, half-sings. She’s dissected her burger, separated the pieces on her plate. Slices now into the meat with fork and knife. “Anyway, haven’t you ever heard of asking?”

Hwitaek’s mouth opens and closes, flapping like a fish. Beside them, the moth beats its wings against the window glass, insistent on being let in. Hyojong picks up his own knife and stabs it into Hyuna’s tomato slice, stealing it away and popping it into his mouth. Burst of crimson on his tongue.

“It’s okay,” he says. Chewing delicately. “Where would be the fun in that?”

Hyuna points her knife at him, scowling. “Thief,” she accuses, and she leans forward, sips up the last of Hyojong’s soda. When she pulls away, smug, her lipstick’s left imprints on the straw, the shape of her mouth marked in red.

Hwitaek stares at them both. Something about it a little helpless. He hadn’t ordered anything off the menu, hasn’t got anything to do with his hands.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Hyojong asks him.

“Nah.” It’s a lie, but Hyojong just shrugs. Brings the glass to his lips and tips his head back, catching the ice cubes in his mouth. He holds them on his tongue, water melting cool down his throat, and when he glances back up, Hwitaek is conspicuously turned away, staring at the fidget of his own hands before him. Foot tapping under the table. His shoe knocks against Hyojong’s ankle, and he jerks back, as though burned.

“Listen,” Hwitaek says. “It’s been, uh, fun. But I gotta go.”

“Go where?” Hyuna says through a mouthful of steak.

Hwitaek blinks. “What?”

“Where are you going?” Hyuna repeats slowly, each syllable punctuated with a jab of her knife. A challenge reads dark in her eyes. “Where is there to go, in this town?”

Hwitaek hesitates, caught out. “Nowhere,” he admits eventually. A concession. Hyuna returns to her steak, satisfied.

Hyojong bites down on an ice cube between his back teeth. The moth circles the lamp over their heads. Somehow it’s found a way in, a crack in the glass. “Trick-or-treating,” he suggests.

Hwitaek snorts. “That stuff is for kids,” he says, and then, like an afterthought: “I don’t have a costume.”

Wrong again, Hyojong thinks. But he smiles, teeth stinging from the cold.

“Got an idea,” he says.

 

*

 

The masks come cheap, a plastic pack of six for a handful of bills. They choose through them like fanning a deck of cards and landing lucky, then ditch the rest on the sidewalk, eyeless faces turned up to the sky. Just in time: twilight is upon them, sun setting low and shadows creeping in. The streets alive with children in costume, screaming from house to house in equal parts fear and glee, overturned and set loose on the world.

They get stares, the three of them. “Aren’t you a little too old for this,” some people say when they open their doors, but most are good-natured enough to drop candy into the lip of Hyuna’s purse, Hwitaek’s flower-filled pack, Hyojong’s empty and waiting hands. Others tell them to scram, and they do, running across perfectly manicured lawns like they’re being chased, laughter lifting them like wind. At some point Hwitaek’s pack gets too full and he starts leaving flowers everywhere—propped up against windows, laid gently on car windshields and doormats, sticking out of jack-o-lanterns and mail slots. “Trick-or-treat,” Hyuna says, over and over, until the words smear in her mouth like sugar.

And sometimes they pass by people Hyuna knows, from school, from another life; people who eye her and her company, squinting as though not recognizing who she is, or maybe just seeing her clearly for the first time. The three of them blurring together in the night, transformed under the cover of darkness, shedding their former selves: prom queen and teenage delinquent and lone wolf. Now they form a new sort of creature, one without a name. Their tumble through the suburbs, the tangle of their footsteps and flyaway hair, the circuit of their clasped hands. Shadows following at their heels.

Then one house opens the door to a party in full swing, a riot of lights and noise and movement. “Oh, no,” Hwitaek says. The eyes on his mask big and blue.

“Oh, _yes,_ ” Hyuna corrects, and sweeps inside. The others left to follow.

Inside, the hallways are splayed with flashing colours, red to blue to purple in between. Hyuna falls into step with the rest of the crowd right as the music changes, as though waiting for her all this time. The anonymity a buzz of thrill in her chest, every body around her belonging to a stranger—except for two. Hyojong pulling a reluctant Hwitaek into dance. And there’s something about them—something that makes Hyuna look twice, squinting carefully as though to spot the secret. The air around them seems blurred, though she’s had nothing to drink, not yet. She watches in fascination: the easy sway of Hyojong’s limbs, the careful reciprocation of Hwitaek’s rhythm, giving in further with every step. All the chaos and confusion falling away, reduced to this moment, a closeness between near-strangers, the world parting in their wake. Energy electric between them, as though charged by a spell.

Magic is real, Hyuna takes the time to think, the understanding run through her like lightning.

And then she steps in to join them. A circle made for three.

Hyojong reaches out, curls a strand of her wig around his finger, the green of it glowing in the night. Hwitaek’s shoulder knocks into hers, and he steadies a hand on her waist, then forgets to let go.

“Thought you’d never join,” Hyojong says, and Hyuna grins, leans forward to press a kiss to the painted green star of his left eye.

The night, after all, is only just beginning.

 

*

 

Hwitaek’s sleeve is wet. He registers it absently, the water seeping into his wrist, but it takes a minute for him to really notice, to take stock of his surroundings. The bathroom of a stranger’s house. Tiled walls draped in pink and blue streamers. Hwitaek slumped on the closed lid of the toilet seat, his arm dipped in the full bathtub beside him.

The bathtub, where Hyuna and Hyojong are huddled in the water, still fully clothed, watching each other from opposite ends, legs spread out between them. Matching lollipops in their mouths. Eyes locked in continuation of a conversation Hwitaek doesn’t remember, can’t follow.

A dream, Hwitaek thinks fuzzily. If you don’t know how you got here. That’s how you tell it’s a dream.

Then Hyuna shifts, and her bare thigh grazes Hwitaek’s hand trailing in the water. He yanks his arm out of the tub, sprays water all over himself like a cold shock.

Hyuna and Hyojong both blink at him. Amusement in Hyuna’s gaze, expectation in Hyojong’s. Waiting for him to react.

The music of the party thumps from behind the closed door, through the walls, like the pulse of a living thing. Hwitaek’s mouth tastes of alcohol and regret. He runs a tongue over his lips, throat parched, and brings his hand up, sucks the wetness from his palm.

The night is coming back to him now, in pieces like something smashed apart. The masks, the wigs shed sometime in the mess. Body sore from dancing, but still keeping at it, keeping on. And something else had happened, too. The cramped space of the hallway. Breath hot in his ear, someone leaning in close. “It got me here,” someone had whispered. A weight against his chest.

Hwitaek peers down. There’s something tied around his neck, a necklace of some sort, tucked carefully under the collar of his shirt. He means to take it out, see what it is, but in a moment of sudden clarity he realizes his pockets are empty.

A crowd full of bodies, and he hadn’t stolen anything at all—

“Where’s my pack,” Hwitaek says. Scrambling to his feet a little too quickly, and he loses some time to the rush of his head. When he can see straight again, everything glitters at him. Hyojong’s sunk down in the tub, face half submerged in the water, and Hyuna’s eyes are narrowed, catlike.

“It’s right there,” she says, muffled around her lollipop. “What are you worried for?”

Hwitaek spots it half-hidden behind the toilet. It’s filled almost entirely with candy at this point. Among the brightly coloured wrappers is a single stalk of forget-me-nots, clusters of pale blue. Relief sinks through him like a stone.

When he looks back up Hyuna and Hyojong have closed the distance between them, and are caught in a kiss.

His mind goes blank. A short-circuit of shock. Everything gaining that fuzzy quality again, like a dream. So he doesn’t know how long he watches them for—the slide of their mouths together, passing lollipops back and forth, slick with red. Their eyes closed, lashes fluttering against cheeks, so soft Hwitaek can feel the ache of it in his bones, every nerve tingling and set alight. The frothing water of the tub almost seeming to bloom around them like flowers.

Then Hyuna bites down on Hyojong’s bottom lip, and the prick of phantom pain jerks Hwitaek awake, alert.

“Shit,” he says, and he really shouldn’t have, because their eyes are open, now, looking at him. When they pull apart the water is perfectly still. Hyojong has lipstick smeared on his chin. A flush of pink burned into Hyuna’s nose and cheeks. The mark they’ve made.

Had he... Had they?

Hyuna removes the lollipop from her mouth. It’s in the shape of a heart.

“I gotta go,” Hwitaek says, words stumbling over each other in their rush to escape. “I gotta go.”

“Go where?” Hyuna raises her eyebrow, impatient. As if to say: we’ve been over this before.

But even if they had—what does it matter, what does any of it matter. He doesn’t even _know_ them—Hyojong, a head of pale hair in the back of class, a ghost haunting the outskirts of town; Hyuna, a halo over the rest of them, forcing everyone under her into an awful light. Both of them strangers, and all of it a mistake. Got too close, didn’t he, and look what happened—caught and went up in flames, the shame of it burning him from the inside out. The ruin of a perfectly good thing. Nothing left in the morning but ashes, the spell broken, the magic returning to the earth. Clock striking midnight.

“I gotta go,” Hwitaek says again. Third time’s the charm. He grabs his pack, slams open the bathroom door, and runs back out into the real world.

Outside, the night has sunk its teeth in with a vengeance, cold wringing him out to dry. His sleeve’s dripping water everywhere, but he wraps his arms tighter around himself against the wind, forges blindly through the neighbourhood, following the haze of streetlights. He’s got to run, that’s all. Put as much distance between him and what he’s left behind, run until he burns out, the empty forest of want inside him good for nothing but a flash fire scrubbing him clean—

“Hey,” comes a familiar voice from behind him, “if it isn’t the _freak,_ ” and Hwitaek closes his eyes, surrenders.

A punch to the gut and he’s down. Body remembering pain everywhere it’s received, the scrape of his palms against asphalt, the skin of his knees, but also remembering something else. Muscle memory, mapping touch all over him. A hand on his hip, a fall of hair over his face, lips mouthing at his neck. The cramped space of the hallway. Flicker of the lightbulb.

“Thought it didn’t work for me,” Hyojong said in his ear, “but it did. It got me here. I’m passing it on to you, now. Think you’ll need it.”

He strung something around Hwitaek’s neck. A pendant, Hwitaek thought, a vial, maybe, something inside it he couldn’t see. Hyojong tucked it under the collar of Hwitaek’s shirt, patted it, smiled as though pleased.

“For luck,” Hyojong said.

And Hwitaek had never had anything given to him before. Everything to his name he’d had to steal for himself. Dizzy with the joy of it, he had leaned in, kissed Hyojong straight on the mouth. Kissed that startled smile off his face, and over their heads, the lightbulb popped, went out.

Oh, Hwitaek has enough presence of mind to think, oh _shit,_ and the next hit catches him in his ribs. The breath’s choked out of him, but now he scrabbles at the pavement beneath him, fights to get to his knees. Lunges, wild, for anything he can reach. Anywhere he can hurt.

“Fuck,” someone’s cursing. The thudding of footsteps. Hwitaek’s still clawing the air, grabbing fistfuls of cloth.

“Stop, stop it, it’s _me._ ”

Hwitaek stops.

Hyuna’s perfume has long worn off, faded away. Now she smells like sweat and alcohol, soaking wet in her full-length dress, skin gleaming in the darkness. Burning with pale fury.

“You _idiot,_ ” Hyuna says. “Are you okay?”

His nose is bleeding again.

“Never better,” Hwitaek says.

“You idiot,” Hyuna says, once more for good measure. “You took off so fast, I thought I wouldn’t catch up. Thought I’d lost you for sure.”

Hwitaek fingers the weight around his neck.

“Got lucky, then,” he says.

Then it occurs to him. “Hyojong?”

Her eyes flash. “Had to leave him behind to catch you, didn’t I?”

Hwitaek remembers the flicker of the lightbulb, the hallway. Pale eyes intent, careful with wonder, as though holding it for the first time. Then—in the bathtub, half-submerged in water, the vacant gleam of his gaze. The look of the forgotten, waiting to be buried.

Shit.

“We’ve got to find him.”

“Where?” The way Hyuna stares at him—like when she had seen him that first time, caught him in the act. Waiting for something else up his sleeve.

And he’s got nothing, really, has been leaving behind more than he’s holding onto, lately. All the overgrowth he’s left strewn around the neighbourhood. Pieces of beauty, he’d called them; bursts of life that were never meant to last. But how long it must have taken to get there. To grow into what they’d become. His palms ache at the thought of holding something again—not short-lived, not passing by, cycling through the rot, but something that can stay.

“I’ll take you there,” Hwitaek says.

She holds out his hand. Déjà vu catches him in its grip. Come on, Hwitaek. Up and into the light.

This time, he takes it.

 

*

 

Hyojong’s greenhouse glows warm from within. The faint shape of shadows against the glass, as though preserved in amber. The door is left unlocked.

Upon their arrival Hyojong looks up at them from his spot on the ground, surrounded by plants. A butterfly perched in his hair, a flower behind his ear. Something about the sight incredibly lonely.

He tucks up the corner of his mouth in a crooked smile.

“So who’s the trick, and who’s the treat?”

Hyuna pushes Hwitaek forward, into the greenhouse. He stumbles in, catches himself. He’s got something in his hands.

A branch of forget-me-nots, blue and silvered like stars.

“It worked,” Hwitaek says. The charm laid over his shirt, hanging from his neck.

Hyojong raises an eyebrow. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“It worked,” Hwitaek insists.

A moment passes between them like the flicker of a candle flame. Hyuna holds her breath.

Hyojong reaches up, takes the flowers. The curl of his fingers against Hwitaek’s hand, so gentle Hyuna clenches her own fist at her side in some misplaced echo of longing. All the plants rustle, though there are no windows to let in the wind, and the butterfly flutters up into the air.

“Oh,” Hwitaek says, “it’s _you_ ,” as though coming to a slow understanding, to a reflection in a pool of clear water.

Hyuna claps her hands together once more. Good trick.

Hyojong lifts the forget-me-nots to his face. His tone and expression neutral. “Is that what you came for?”

Outside, the mournful call of a crow, and then silence. The witching hour, taking flight and passing them by. Only the new days and nights to come—but those, too, are changed now, Hyuna knows. A gleaming piece of the world revealed to her. And a threshold come upon her, cracked slightly ajar, waiting.

She steps forward, through, and feels with satisfaction the door slam closed behind her.

Hyojong watches as she comes close. Drops down beside him to sit on the ground. Leans against the glass wall, leaves tickling her ankles, her shoulders, the back of her neck.

“Here,” she says. Reaches out to take the bundle of flowers from him. Starts to twist the stems together, into a circle.

Hwitaek sits down on Hyojong’s other side. Around them, the garden lush with green. Wild tangles of plants, cultivated with care. A frog peers out from under a sprout, and leaps back into the shadows. Safe.

In her hands, the woven thread of forget-me-nots completes into a crown. Hyuna places it on Hyojong’s head; he has to duck down slightly to receive it.

“There,” she says, and kisses the pink of his cheek, as though staking her claim.

 

*

 

In the morning Hyuna’s lipstick is all kissed off. Hyojong reapplies it for her in the light of sunrise. She holds as still as she can, but giggles every once in a while, eyes and nose crinkling under his touch.

When he’s done she puckers her lips at him. “Thanks,” she says, and she runs a finger up the line of his throat, coming to rest on his pulse. The quickening of blood there.

“Ah,” Hyojong says, just to feel the vibration against her skin. Anticipation in his throat like the cast of a spell, an incantation, and dangling over their heads, the charms clink against each other like windchimes.

“How _are_ you doing that,” Hwitaek says. Huddled among the flower bushes, playing with something in his hands—a lighter.

Hyojong shrugs. Sometimes if he concentrates, wants it hard enough, the world will move for him. Only in small touches—the stir of a breeze, the shiver of a plant. Static electricity clinging to him like a magnet. As a child he’d done it as much as he could, never tiring of the way the world could bend through him like rays of light from a prism. Now what he does is only what he can’t help. A rumour he can’t keep quiet inside his chest.

“Show me,” Hyuna says.

Hyojong smiles back at her. No one’s asked to see, before.

But then again, no one’s _seen_ before, either.

Now he focuses on the sunlight surrounding the three of them. Strings it around them, layer by layer, into a shimmering bubble, filtering the world in gold.

“Wow,” says Hwitaek.

Hyuna does him one better. Darts forward and catches Hyojong’s mouth in hers.

The bubble pops, loud like a light switching itself on and off again.

He lets it go. He can make the world move in other ways, too. A different kind of magic. Like this. 

Hyuna’s pulled off him and hooked Hwitaek in by the string of the charm hung around his neck. The lighter forgotten at their feet. When they come together, the wind sighs, and Hyojong sinks into its touch like a comfort. Smiles to himself in secret. 

There in the realm of quietly growing things, Hyojong takes their hands in his, and starts to hum a song.

 


End file.
